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Monday, 3 December 2012

Toronto: A Critical Tour, Pt.2.

Just as soon as you’ve acclimatized
to the suits and Irish-Pubs gone Hollywood, the fashonistas disappear and the
weather is groping under your skin. It’s pre-winter; that time of year when
it’s too damn cold for your permeable city skin and the snow hasn’t fallen yet
so all you’re left with is a cloudy sky and gusts of wind that feel like a
thousand tiny needles assaulting the light fall coat you’ve adorned in full
denial of the rapidly changing seasons. Beside you is a bus stop that is
ordinarily graffiti’d with black ink, mocking the cheesy poster of some kid
visiting The North Pole. At your feet, though, close to one hundred wreaths,
flowers and envelopes trace the periphery of the glass shelter and cover the
gap where the walls end and the sidewalk begins. You look up; you’re standing
on the corner of Danzig St. and Morningside Ave.

Not six months ago, Danzig St. was
seen by many as just another failed low-income housing project that centralized
crime in Toronto’s East end suburb of Scarborough. One fateful night in July
2012, however, would change this community forever as gunshots rang out over
the scene of a massive ‘block party’ early in the evening. A staggering 23
people would be wounded and two more victims dead after ‘Toronto’s
deadliest shooting’ shook fear into the lives of the families involved.
Although the horror of such a tragedy is unparalleled, the attributed gun and
gang-related violence is not uncommon in the area. Consequently, the ‘Danzig
Shootings’ became a poster child for how community violence was framed in local
media long after.

His Righteousness, the soon to be exiled Mayor Rob Ford visiting Danzig soon after the shootings.

Like plenty of other stories we hear
and read about, the shootings in Lower West Hill were retold by dominant media
as an external problem, blaming guns and gangs for this and other crime-related
activities in the GTA. What we miss, however, is a fuller and more complete
analysis of what is actually happening in a place like Danzig. Newpapers and TV
reports fail to properly identify and discuss how the Toronto District School
Board (TDSB) has recently
closed several public schools in the area with more cutbacks to
extracurricular programming in the facilities that do exist, or how rapid
development and corporatization in the area has further marginalized low-income
communities, and what part that has played in the rising rates of violence in
West Hill.

Perspectives from Toronto Police
don’t add much clarity to the situation, either. A recent study conducted on
police accounts of gun violence in Toronto found that the violence was
‘commonly associated in the media with young black males’ and that ‘the most
prominent police frame attributed the problem to the proliferation of gangs,
illegal gun smuggling and illicit drug trafficking.’ (Ezeonu, I, 2010. pp.150).
The language and jargon of these reports can be incredibly oppressing and
smother community voices, disadvantaging the affected peoples by discouraging
reclamation of shared values, space and safety. Being critical of media
literacy identifies how language in media can subversively blame and finger-point
without accurately depicting a story (this is also referred to as Critical Media Literacy). Bakari Chavanu
(2011) explains how ‘Critical media literacy proposes that, with different
information, viewers might make different choices or engage in different behaviours’
(pg.285). The idea that media can influence behaviour is incredibly poignant to
the case of the Danzig Shootings and other crime in the GTA because of its
relevancy to our reactions and perspectives.

Queen West

From outer city
to urban innards, you’ve immersed yourself into the never ending flocks of
tourists that head West: to Queen West, that is. There is, arguably, no better
example of a corporate takeover in the city than Queen West between Younge
Street and Bathurst. Unlike the oober-modern New-York inspired Dundas Square, a
flashy cousin to the North of Queen West, there was little to no planning
involved in the expansion of big, multinational companies that usurped space
originally entitled to the indie scene on this strip of Queen Street. Only the
second largest destination for shoppers in Toronto, it can be easy to lose
yourself amongst the crowds that line the precipice of concrete and glossy
storefront on any given day.

The unbridled change of corporate
stakeholders on Queen West has also affected the identity of its residents and
long time community members. Once upon a time, this area was slated for long
term ‘cultural redevelopment’ that would invest in important social services
and support local business. But as Queen West became a popular destination in
Toronto, larger and more powerful players became involved. The mix of modernist-planning
dominating at city hall and multinational interest in the 1960’s would quickly
rearrange priorities on Queen West and transform its fabric. This extreme
change is also ‘attributed to such factors as existing land use planning
regulatory frameworks and the organizational structures prevalent in municipal
government.’ (Mcdonough & Wekerle, 2011. Pg.41). Today, any cultural
planning still prevalent on Queen West exists in spaces that must be actively
searched.

While the invasion of neon street
signs infects your body with harsh coloured lights, you catch something
different out of the corner of your eye. Down a narrow alley and beyond the
skeleton of a fire escape you examine how the colours on the wall bleed and
blend into each other, creating a vast array of multi-toned pictures and
obscure manifestos. Curiosity grabs hold as you step off Portland Street and
into a world where shapes form words and every inch of space is covered with
something unique. You are on Rush Lane, aka ‘Graffiti
Alley’, where street art monstrously invades your every sense. Scrawled on
walls are coded messages, disproportionate animals, fantastical renderings of
figureheads and secret letters for lovers past. To describe it as political
graffiti would be a grave understatement, but it’s all we have. If there’s any
one place cultural planning should be expanded, it’s from graffiti alley out
into the world at large.

Graffiti has been a medium utilized
by many for many years. The endless possibilities for its use as a tool of
expression, dissent, creativity, art-making and more have kept graffiti culture
in Toronto strong. As the municipal government declares war
on graffiti, the graffiti-makers find more applications. Political graffiti
engages passersby and disrupts the influence of corporate city spaces like
Queen West. Stencils and other types of wall art can be used as ‘a form of
protest...throughout the world...because they are easy to make, quick to apply,
and can be used over and over...Whether in a school or on the streets, stencils
– at least political ones – can catch onlookers’ attention and make them
think.’ (Reed, 2011. Pg.298).

St. Lawrence

The-absurd-hectic clusterfuck of
Queen West was probably enough to induce a seizure, so it’s nice that you’ve
ended up in a rather tranquil setting during this last leg. You can faintly
hear children laughing in the background of a small urban park, the odd car
rumbles by but the quiet of this place is almost melodic. You haven’t left the
city, but you’ve arrived at your final destination. Welcome to the St. Lawrence
residential neighbourhood in Toronto’s West Port Lands.

Bound by the decrepit Gardiner
Expressway to the South, the bustle of Front Street East on the North, the
entrepot Union Station a close neighbour to the West and The Distillery
District on the East, the St. Lawrence community is probably the last place you
would expect to find a little peacefulness. Yet here it is; a well thought-out
collective of people who represent almost every walk of life in Toronto: single
working professionals, low-income families, young couples, conservatives,
liberals, socialists....In semi-blissful harmony. So what is it about this
place that absorbs its residents in a bout of radical inclusivity, and how has
media helped in the shaping of the community?

If Toronto has royally messed up on
its waterfront by allowing the ugly giant teeth of high-rise condos to spatter
the lakeshore, then St. Lawrence stands in defiance of this rubric by offering
an alternative solution of inviting people from all over the city into a shared
space. The development has made this possible by offering a blend of at-market
and subsidized housing while building mixed-use business and recreational areas.
The successful collision of multiple demographics has produced opportunities
for expression and art making that has bled into the rest of the city.

One such community arts organization
to rise from the mesh of people in St. Lawrence is the Neighbourhood Arts Network;
an organization that has supported many St. Lawrence public artwork projects
including the Co-Ops
Artwork. The outcomes have included giant community-engaged murals in the
area that embody the challenges and realities of co-operative housing
environments in Toronto. Other pieces that have emerged from the Arts Network
are the Scrape-Bleeker murals, an 18’ public artwork designed by the Bleeker
Street Co-operative members. Community-based murals are just another example of
how community artists transcend what de Zengotita (2005) referred to as ‘an
environment of representations’, where highly fabricated media addresses us ‘by
design. We are at the center of all the attention, but there is a thinness to
things, a smoothness, a muffled quality.’ (pg.15). Embracing the messiness of
community arts in St. Lawrence has directly opposed the streamlined nature of
mainstream art and provided a venue for all voices to be heard.

Sources

de Zengotita, T.
(2005). Mediated: How the Media Shapes
Our World and the Way We Live

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